rather exceptional to be said for him. He had a silly idea, but enough to make him laugh out loud. He loved the hill stream freshness of youth. He loved romance, which was why he spent all he could afford on scholarly works on the Elizabethan poets. He had meant it; he generally said what he meant.
A youthful romance inside the embassy that looked across the river to the towers of the citadel of the Kremlin would hurry them all towards the Moscow spring, and young Holt had seemed to him the sort of man who could keep it circumspect.
He gave a belly laugh as he jotted the note on his memory pad.
He had always been young Holt.
The name had stuck to him from the time he was first sent from his Devon home near Dulverton to the south of the county and boarding school. Something about his face, his appearance, had always been younger than his age, He'd lost his first name at school, and there was always enough of his school contemporaries staying during the holidays to call him by his surname. His parents had picked the name up from the boys who came to stay. At home he was just Holt. At University College, London, three years and an upper second in Modern History, he was just Holt. Nine months in the School of East European and Slavonic Studies, language learning, he was just Holt. Two years in the Soviet department of the FCO and still just Holt. He didn't discourage it. He rather liked the name, and he thought it set him apart.
For the whole of the first morning in the outer office attached to the ambassador's, Miss Davenport watched him Large owl eyes, and her attention distracted sufficientlt for her to make more typing errors in 140 minutes than she would normally have managed in a month. Holt had looked once at her, wondered if she was in the running for a set of Lady Armitage's tights, and discarded the thought as cheap.
She brought him three cups of coffee as he unravelled the file for the visit to Yalta. If his predecessor had stayed the course then Holt would have been glad of a gentle run in to his duties. But it was a mess, had only been taken so far, had missed two necessary weeks of knocking into shape. Holt reckoned the file could have been part of the aptitude test they'd given him at FCO after the entrance exam. He attacked the problem, and wished Miss Davenport didn't smoke. Holt was a smoker and trying to kick it and the Camel fumes were rich temptation.
He wrestled the Crimea programme into shape, so that he could dominate it. First flight to Simferopol.
Helicopter transfer to Yalta, check in at the hotel, hire car booked with Intourist. Lunch at the City Authority with the chairman and the deputy chairman, and then back to the hotel for an hour's break before meeting the local newspaper editors. Dinner at the hotel, the British hosting, and the guest list including the same chairman and deputy chairman and the legion of freebooters they would have in tow. That was day one… day two in Sevastopol, day three in Feodosija, and the ambassador had said that if he was coming all that way he was damned if he was going to be prevented from walking the length of the Light Brigade's charge – his predecessor's note on that was underlined twice.
Another note in the handwritten scrawl of his predecessor. The ambassador intended to lay a wreath at any British military cemetery that was still fit to visit.
'Stormed at with shot and shell, While horse and hero fell, They that had fought so well Came thro' the jaws of Death, Back from the mouth of Hell.' Good for Sir Sylvester if he was going to remember Cardigan's heroes with a poppy wreath, but there was no sign of the cemetery yet. That he would have to do himself.
Holt worked late that first day, and he didn't see Jane.
Only a cryptic message on his internal phone to state that she was going straight from the office to the Oklahoma rehearsal, that he should get his beauty sleep.
For young Holt the first week flew. He would have sworn he had learned more from life in the capital of the Soviet Union in that one week than he had gathered togetherin two years shuttling paper, and calling it analysis, on the Soviet Desk at FCO.
He went with the ambassador to the Foreign Ministry and was present at a preliminary planning meeting with the Secretariat of the Deputy Foreign Minister for the arrival in Moscow the following month of the Inter- Parliamentary Union from London. He attended a reception thrown by the Foreign Trade crowd for a Scots firm working on the natural gas pipeline across Siberia. He explored the Metro. He was taken out to dinner with Jane, by the Second Secretary Commercial andhis wife. He was invited to supper, with Jane, by the first Secretary Political and his wife. He went to the disco, with Jane, at the British Club. He drove out of the city, with Jane, in the British Leyland Maestro that he had been allocated, to the embassy's dacha for aweekend picnic with her boss, the military attache, and his wife. That he was determined to be circumspect, and that Jane had the curse, were the only drawbacks.
At the end of that first week he had the programme for Yalta beaten, also the draft of the programme for thel Members of Parliament when they flew out, and he had persuaded Miss Davenport to restrict his coffee ration to two per day, and he had seen the wisdom of the ambassador.
Because of his girl, he was the centre of attraction in the confined oasis that was the embassy community. Of n u r s e he didn't touch her, not in public, not where anyone could see. But they were light in the darkness.
Their laughter and their fun and their togetherness were a lift to the embassy personnel who had endured the short day, long night misery of the Moscow winter.
At his morning meeting with the ambassador, Holt presented the programme for Yalta.
' There's one problem. Lady Armitage isn't back so her aircraft seats are extra; should we cancel them?'
'Wouldn't have thought so.'
'Whom would you like to take, Ambassador?'
'I'd like to have a hostess for our receptions, and I would like to take the most competent Russian linguist on my staff. To you she may, among other things, just be personal assistant to the military attache, to me she is a very highly regarded member of the t e a m.. . '
'Jane?' A flood of pleasure.
The ambassador's voice dropped, 'Miss Davenport has hearing that puts to shame the most sophisticated state security audio systems.. . I fancy that a few days out of the clutches of our colleagues' wives would not distress you.'
'That's very good of you.'
'She's coming to work, and don't forget to make double sure that you've booked an extra single room for every hotel we're staying in.'
'Will be done.'
'Holt, it's a good programme, well presented. I learn more about the life blood of the Soviet Union from these visits than from anything else I do. And, most important, we are on show. We are the representatives of our country. You'll give Miss Canning my respects and request her to accompany us, having first checked with the military attache that he can spare her. You will fix the hotel accommodation, you will sort out the necessary travel permission for her from the Foreign Ministry… Get on with it, Holt.'
'Darling, nothing's what it seems… Ben's not an agony aunt … '
'He talked about us getting out of the clutches of the embassy wives.'
They were in the bar of the British Club, not up on the stools where the noise was, where the newspaper men and his buisness community gathered, but against the far wall. She was on her second campari and soda, and there was a strain about her that was new to him.
He drank only tonic water with ice and lemon because besides cutting out cigarettes he had forsworn alcohol from Monday to Friday and he was suffering.
''Don't be silly, Holt, don't think he's taking me to Yaltajust so that we can have a cuddle in the corner without anyone knowing.'
''Why is he taking you, then?'
''Put your thinking cap on, Holt. I'm a hell of a good linguist. At East European and Slavonic I actually had abetter mark in the oral than you did. Had you forgotten that? I 'm in Moscow. I'm personal assistant to the brigadier who is the military attache. An excuse has been found to take me down to the Crimea.'
He stared at her. She was taller than he was. She had fair hair to her shoulders. She had gun-metal grey eyes that he worshipped. She wore a powder blue blouse and a severe navy blue suit.
''Asi said, Ben's not thinking of you and me, Ben's thinking of the job.'
'And at Sevastopol there i s… '
''I don't want to talk about Sevastopol, nor do I want to talk about what's at Simferopol – I want to have a
